With 400 miles between us, Drunk Tailor and I have few chances to explore the past together, so I was both delighted and nervous when he agreed to join the British Garrison 1775 event at Fort Ticonderoga as one of Captain Delaplace’s servants. Even better, we were also joined by the itinerant Deep North Yankee who wandered around the Fort (possibly seeking roofing shingles, of which he is much in need).

Friday nights are always magical, candle and firelight (and only the warmth of the fire) as we drink cider and talk about history. But morning always comes: Saturday, cold and clear, Mr S and I woke and blinked across the room at each other, and I wondered to what degree I really wanted to ever crawl out of bed…only hunger and an eventual need to pee (and fear of a Sergeant) propelled me.

Yup, you cook ’em on a board.

First order of business: breakfast. Mr S, supplied with his corn meal of choice, made us johnnycakes, which provided perhaps more interpretive than nutritive value. Still, they were warm and tasty and he is the only person I know who can make them; my efforts end up as FEMA disaster sites.

Captain Delaplace’s servants were tasked with cooking for his mess, so Mr S and I got a start. We had a chicken, an onion (I traded onion # 2 for some bacon), butter, carrots, potatoes, a butternut squash, salt, and some port. I don’t know where this English serving woman of 1775 encountered mis en place, but she accidentally introduced coq au vin to the Captain’s table with the dinner meal.

Captain and Mrs Delaplace dining, manservant in attendance

The Captain and his Lady dined on chicken braised in butter and bacon with root vegetables in a port sauce; we servants waited until they were done before we could eat. (Confession: I need to eat a lot, and have a sensory overload problem, so when visitors fully crowded the room, I had to dash across the parade ground for a Clif Bar and an Ativan before I could continue to wait for my dinner.) In the afternoon, dishes were washed at the table, as was common (at least in early New England), dried, and set away, while the Captain’s lady and child played in the cabbage patch between the beds.

When the room was empty, servants were able to eat (huzzay!) and found the meal very tasty indeed. I would certainly make this again, and learned more about cooking– a typically female task I generally try to avoid– than I had expected to. Then we had yet another round of dishes before it was time to tidy the room and make ready for tea or supper.

To that end, we cleared the table and broke it apart to reveal the floor and hearth, which needed to be swept of bread crumbs, squash peels, dead leaves, and other detritus. The best way to sweep an unfinished floor in the 18th century (per Hannah Glasse et al) is to strew the floor with wet sand and then sweep. I mixed sand with lavender-infused vinegar and threw it on the floor; this keeps the dust down as you sweep months of dust and dirt out of the corners and from behind tables and chests.

The trick is to sweep in one direction (more or less) from the back of the room to the front, and then to gather up the sand (here in a shovel) and pitch it off the landing. Much was thrown out the door and over the stair rail, just as servants would have done in 1775. (And I am told it is soothing to nearly hit the sergeant, but perhaps that’s merely hearsay, if not heresy.)

When we were done, we restored the table (Drunk Tailor noticed the height of the ceiling, and wondered about hanging birds in cages whist awaiting the return of the tabletop), fully reset with cloth, candlesticks, plates, and knives, ready for the supper we didn’t cook, as we skipped away at the close of the day to find our own meal in Glens Falls, where live music is inescapable on a Saturday night.

A day after participating in the “Now Left to their Own Defense” event at the Fort, I feel a bit destroyed myself, in the best possible way. (It isn’t history till it hurts, but sometimes cold nights on straw-filled ticks get into what’s left of my hip bones.)

Women at work. Photo by M.S.

Every trip to Ti teaches me something new. This time, against all odds, it was cooking. Against all odds because I usually object to reinforcing gender norms at living history events, particularly in a military setting, when women did not typically cook for mens’ messes. Fort Ti is different: both times I have cooked there, it has been as part of the women’s mess.

Done! And no, it didn’t taste burnt. Photo by M.S.

This past Saturday, we may have gone a bit overboard, but we justified our efforts with the thought that Loyalist women would not only have used up all the supplies they could (waste not, want not) before retreating, but that they might also have striven for normal activity and to prove their worth to men whose protection they needed.

To that end, we made bread pudding. I’m a fan of Indian pudding and rice pudding, but I’ve never made a bread pudding, despite the similarity of these starch-and-custard concoctions. I like to think that rather than having reached a “throw reason and caution to the winds” point, I have, like any good 18th century cook, become comfortable enough not to rely on measuring cups but rather trust my eye and experience. Enablers help, of course, and I had the pleasure of spending my day with some of my favorites and meeting new ones, too.

The dirt on Fort Ti came home on my shoes. And my petticoats. And my gown. And possibly my face, which could explain the reactions I got when I stopped for gas on the Pike Saturday evening.

It’s incredible how how dirty, dusty, and straw-filled a room can get– and that’s just the officer’s room. For all I know, a horse had been sleeping in the back corner of the barracks room we cleaned– who else would leave so much straw?

Regular readers know I have a thing about portraying women’s work in the past, as well as historical cleaning methods and what I like to call “experimental archaeology” and other people call “that crazy hobby- thing- where you get cold and dirty.” We started with mop making, of course, and when I loaded the car on Friday morning, I was pretty well pleased with my swag.

Every good experience begins with a meal. Friday night supper included bread, cheese, pork loin and apple, imported from Rhode Island. Yes, I also helped myself to bacon, to ensure none was wasted. Bedtime for officers’ servants comes early: I’m not a stranger to rope beds, but found this straw tick far more comfortable than a previous arrangement elsewhere.

Ticks rolled back for cleaning

Start in one corner…don’t stop!

After formation, to tasks. I was ably assisted by Miss Sam, who was a better height for the brooms than I. The brooms are speculative on the one hand, and later on the other. The corn broom was markedly more effective than the broom straw, which disintegrated with use, though not for lack of care in making. We were up against some serious accumulation.

Housekeeping and servants manuals from the period, like Hannah Glasse, tell you the cleaning must be done every day. It’s certainly something I heard within my own lifetime, though an ideal I continually struggle to achieve despite the advances of Mr Kenmore. The general rule is to begin at the top and work your way down: gravity is, at last, your friend. I use brushes– a large, soft round paint brush and a stiffer circular whisk– to remove dust and dirt from upper surfaces, and cobwebs from corners, and other wall-borne detritus. Gentlefolk: your cleaning ladies know much about you in any century.

After sweeping (yes, into the fireplace or out the door, it’s that simple), scrubbing. I scrubbed the baseboards first with vinegar and water (the vinegar infused with lavender for several years). Filth, my friends. Then we mopped. Again, filth.

I would have preferred to do another dust collection on the floor– the water did pool a bit on the dry dust that remained, but swabbing seemed to work and I believe we left the floor cleaner than it had been. The three mops we tested (wool, cotton, and linen strips) each had benefits and deficits.

The cotton and wool caught on the rough floor boards, but did a good job spreading water around the floor and lifting dirt. The linen strips were better at not catching and at scrubbing.

No matter what, the water got filthy and took on the look and nearly the consistency of the chocolate we drank that day. Remember the iron museum rule: don’t lick it! That rule applies everywhere.

Everyone and everything got cleaned Saturday. Miss V broached the laundry with vigor, but discovered that possibly untoward things had been done in her laundry tub. Things that might involve shoes, and blacking. Marks were left on shifts and shirts, so even the wash tub got a scrub this garrison weekend.

Some of the best comments came after the fact: I’ve never heard cleaning called “one of the coolest things” seen all day, but when someone says it helps them see a space in an entirely new way, I’m incredibly happy. There’s so much about the everyday use– and maintenance– of space and objects and each other that we take for granted in our own lives. Surely the people of the past who had servants took all that work for granted.

But for me, enamored as I am of details and of the quotidian, transforming a space through the everyday work of women is a job with doing. Thanks to Fort Ti’s staff for giving me the chance to step back in time and enjoy (really, I mean it) a day of hard work bringing the mundane back to life.

They’re pretty consistent: mops appear to be made of fibers attached to a handle. These look like they’re simple string mops. A stick and string? A stick and rags strips? Something along those lines. But what kind of string? What kind of fiber? How was it attached?

I’ll confess that I have been too lazy to search collection for extant mops– no, seriously, if someone offered me an 18th century mop my first reaction after “Absolutely!” would be, “Wait a second…how can there be anything left of an 18th century mop? My own mops don’t last all that long….” so I assumed no such critter exists in captivity (feel free to prove me wrong, I could use an assist here). Instead, I went ahead with the daft notion of replicating what I saw in images.

After work on Saturday, I went mop-top-shopping. It was not one stop. An internal rant developed about how companies can call anything “wool” that is less than 100% wool, but I managed to contain myself and with enough hunting turned up hero cord, 100% wool yarn and 100% cotton yarn as well as dowels. Sadly, I could not find wool roving in any color but grey. So, making a mop from craft and hardware store supplies is a pretty easy thing, especially when you don’t have many tools to complicate the business.

This is not my first rodeo where string is concerned, so I wrapped the yarn around a cutting board just the way you’d make a pom pom. How else will you get it all the same length (more or less)? The result: a somewhat sad hank in search of purpose, tied off in the more-or-less middle of the strands.

Temporarily secured

Tied off with hemp cord

Secured temporarily with a rubber band, I tied the hank to the dowel with hemp cord. Then I turned the wool (and later cotton) back over itself, and tied it off again. I pulled as tight as I could manage, much to the chagrin of my now-blistered pinky finger. Small price to pay, though, for two new entrants in the experimental archaeology of cleaning. As I looked at the images in Sandby’s drawing and in the prints, I was pretty confident the mops are not tied off again in this second way, but one band didn’t seem secure enough. So, yet another compromise, but one that I hope will result in less hilarity from losing mop heads in the midst of washing floors.

Wool…

…and cotton

Now, if I would but turn my attention to the lint, string, and yarn scattered about my floor at home…

Springtime sadness is best remedied by scouring[1], so in the best Scandinavian fashion, I have been looking into 18th century cleaning. Dem barracks, right?

First of all, were you wondering about what exactly they “smoked and cleansed” smallpox victims’ rooms with? Brimstone and frankincense.[2] Now you know what Edward Langford would wake up smelling when the house next door was free of smallpox.

But what about those floors? They need to be cleaned. Swept, yes, and scrubbed with sand. But also mopped, and the doorstep mopped.

I have a broom and a whisk broom, and can substitute a kettle for my sad bucket[3] but I lack a suitable mop. Lack never deterred me, whether of skills, knowledge, or supplies, so off to the interwebs and library I went.

Some part of the Camp and about the long Barracks in particular is relaxing into nastiness. Regimental QuarterMasters have been ordered to have them Clean and keep them so. An Officer of each Company has been ordered to visit the Barracks every day and to Confine & Report those who throw bones of meat Pot Liquor or filth of any kind near the Barracks. Yet all this has been done and no report has been made. it is hatefull to General Howe to Reitterate orders as it ought to be shamefull those who make it necessary.

Fort Ti was described to me as “Disney World for Re-enactors,” but my vote is for Living History’s Moonrise Kingdom.

Idyllic, ain’t it?

I almost didn’t go when my Saturday night roomshare cancelled on Monday and then I developed an ear ache on Wednesday, but on Thursday, Low Spark , Mlle Modiste and I arranged a carpool, so on Friday morning, a Carload of Rhode Islanders (a thing to behold and to be wary of) set off for points north.

Our initial plan was to to sleep in the soldiers’ huts, but they proved extremely crowded and smokey, so when Mlle Modiste and I were offered a bunk in the barracks, we took it… unfortunately, only one of the blankets I’d brought for us did not make it back up to the fort or into the car heading home.

Mlle Modiste at the huts

Before supper, we stuffed bed ticks, started a fire, startled a bat (I was not the source of the shriek that brought officers, women, and soldiers running), and stuffed straw in the hole we thought it flew into (thank goodness I’m tall, I guess).

Smoke didn’t just get in your eyes…

The tavern moved up to the would-be armory at the barracks, though I’m certain multiple political deals and presidential candidacies could have been plotted and bought down at the smoke-filled huts. Instead, it was reenactor politics as usual: parallel experiences for men and women (not ladies, thank you, and if I hear you use “distaff” about me, expect to find one has become part of your anatomy). Just because I’m used to it doesn’t mean I don’t notice it, understand it, and still dislike it.

We’d expected to attend to “sick” soldiers in the hospital, but Saturday was such a lovely day that we spent most of it outdoors, starting and tending a fire to boil laundry and make dinner for the women’s mess. This pleased me mightily, even as I may have distracted troops despite my advanced age as I crouched at the fire being a human bellows. You try getting low in stays and see how you do: immodesty, thy name is fashion.

While I kept the fire going, much credit should go to Rory, a bad-ass woman in men’s clothing who split wood a-plenty for us. Rory made me want badly to make myself a suit and wield an axe. I find myself wanting to do the same work as the men (I have always been this way), and I was intrigued by the debate that was reported to me: should a woman do men’s work in women’s clothes, or in men’s clothes? In the end, they chose men’s clothes, and Rory wore them well. Reader: I was jealous. I was also covetous of an axe, having realized all the cutting and hewing tools are no longer domiciled with me.

Aunt Kitty’s comin’ for you, boys.

Saturday really revolved around three things for me: food, free agency, and feminism:

I ate some interesting things, including a smoked chocolate cake (left overnight in a hut, I can describe its flavor best as sucking diesel exhaust through a chocolate cupcake).

Now that I’m a free agent attending events sans unit, I have much more fun.

I am determined and dedicated to effecting well-researched roles for women in living history events of all kinds.